Thanks to Groupon acquisition rumors, the blogosphere in the past week is less polluted with news about Facebook and Twitter. Google was quite busy last week and rolled out updates to a lot of its products, Xmarks found a buyer, OnLive introduced PlayPass and Groupon unveiled new features.

Remember OnLive? It’s the gaming service that set its sights high towards offering cloud-based gaming that doesn’t require any special hardware except a system capable of streaming 720p content. It has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry over time and just as much potential to fail miserably.

Recently OnLive took another step towards success, making the platform more accessible to the masses. What have they done? They’ve ditched the base subscription required to access OnLive. Read on for more info. and why we think this is a vital step towards success.

Browser-based games certainly don’t rival console or computer games, either in capabilities or the number of people playing them, but they’re certainly growing in popularity. Facebook has likely had a big role in the uptake of browser-based games thanks to several immensely popular titles that have even made their way onto mobile platforms like the iPhone and iPad.

OnLive.com was initially described as being browser-based gaming, though now the mention of “browser” seems to have disappeared. However, it’s still a revolutionary new way to play online games though a browser-like interface. It’s one service that could keep me from ever buying another console or regular desktop game again, once it develops enough of course.

I’m interested in finding out how many of our readers frequently play browser-based games, only occasionally, or maybe not at all. If you do play browser-based games such as the ones on Facebook, through OnLive or even ones we’ve previously mentioned before, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

I was fortunate enough to be invited to OnLive’s Founding Members Beta, helping stress test their system prior to launch. All beta members had to agree to an NDA, which prevents us to discuss details of our experience during the beta. However, I’ve been able to evaluate OnLive post-launch and here’s our full review of this next generation gaming service.

The long awaited OnLive Game Service is just around the corner, scheduled for a June 17th launch, when they’ll begin activating “launch member” accounts. The OnLive Game Service is an on demand service for games, capable of delivering major game titles via home broadband. The best part? You don’t need a massive graphics card or large game download to play, just jump into a capable browser and start gaming!